He grinned as he closed the door. “You seem awfully chipper this morning.”

“I’m just excited to see you,” I said, and then winced as Misha walked straight through Peanut. “Uh...”

Peanut dispersed like smoke caught in a strong breeze and Misha jerked to a stop, his bright blue eyes widening. “Did I just walk through that ghost?”

“Yeeaah...” I drew the word out.

Piecing back together behind Misha, Peanut crossed his arms. “How rude!”

Misha shuddered. “That is so freaky and makes me so uncomfortable.”

“How do you think I feel?” Peanut snapped back, even though Misha couldn’t hear him. “You were literally inside my body. Inside every part of me. Every. Part.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“What is he saying?” Misha demanded.

“You do not want to know,” I warned. “He’s here because he’s mad that our visitors are taking over ‘his’ bedrooms, and I tried to explain to him that since he’s dead he doesn’t need a bedroom, but he’s not getting it.”

“You dismiss my feelings.” Flinging out his arms, Peanut flounced toward the door. “I’m going to go see if Zayne is getting undressed again. Tootles!”

My mouth dropped open.

“Is he still in here?” Misha asked, looking around the room.

“No. He’s currently being a pervert.”

His nose wrinkled. “You’re right, I really don’t want to know. I’m actually surprised.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t expect you to be here.” He grinned when I rolled my eyes. “Are you actually laying low?”

“For now,” I muttered. “Did you have fun last night hanging out in the Great Hall with everyone?”

He smirked as he turned away. “You sound jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Really?” He walked to my desk chair and sat. When he faced me, he gave me a look that said he knew better.

“Whatever.” I folded my arms.

“I’m actually here to tell you that I finally got a chance to talk to Thierry last night about Clay.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s going to talk to him and his instructors.” Misha moved himself around in a slow circle. “And I think his Accolade will be delayed a year to ensure that he’s ‘mature’ and ‘respectful’ and can be trusted being assigned to one of the outposts.”

“Wow.” I’d known Thierry would do something, but I was surprised by how far he was going. There was a tiny part of me that worried I’d be in trouble somehow. That was dumb, but I couldn’t help it even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong. The problem was that, upon birth, male Wardens were put on a pedestal, and the whole social structure was a breeding ground for misogyny. Sort of the same out in the human world. “Way to go, Thierry.”

“Are you surprised?” The corners of his lips turned down.

“A little. I mean, you know how everything is.” I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I knew he’d do something and I’m happy he’s making sure Clay isn’t some—”

“Creep who pushed too far?” he supplied for me.

I nodded.

Misha made another slow circle in the chair. “Just be alert. Clay’s probably going to be pissed.”

“Probably,” I murmured.

“Not that you can’t hold your own, but...”

“I know.” I sighed, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. “Did you see our visitors?”

“Yeah, they were there, and they did not look happy about it.” Misha smirked, and I frowned. “Anyway, get your butt into your workout clothes so we can get our training done for the day.” Misha rose from the chair.

“I’ll be there in ten,” I told him.

He stopped at the door. “Oh, you won’t be ready in ten minutes, but I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Why?” I blinked.

“I told Thierry you were eavesdropping on his meeting last night,” he explained, and my mouth dropped open. Misha grinned. “I’m sure he’s going to want to talk to you first.”

“You jerk-face!” I shouted as Misha closed the door behind him. Falling back onto the bed, I groaned. I was going to be in so much trouble.

So much.

* * *

It was Jada who knocked on my door next, after I’d changed into a pair of black running tights and a loose white shirt that kept slipping off one shoulder and was surely going to annoy the crap out of me throughout the day.

I pulled my hair up into a ponytail as Jada waited for me on the corner of my bed. She was wearing a pretty, sky-blue, off-the-shoulder dress with a long, billowy skirt that looked amazing against her deep brown skin. Her black hair was buzzed close to the skull.

Sometimes I hated how effortlessly fabulous Jada was.

“I can’t believe Misha told him I was in the hall,” I muttered, tightening my ponytail.

“I guess he felt he needed to just in case someone else said something to Thierry,” Jada reasoned.

I also sometimes hated how logical she was.

I shuffled out of the bathroom, tugging on my shirt so that it was on both my shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jada laughed as she rose to her feet. “Sorry. You look like you’re about to walk the plank.”

“Your uncle is scary when he’s mad.” I followed her from the room and closed the door behind me. I looked around as we went down the hall, not seeing Peanut.

“Yeah, he can be.” She reached the top of the stairs. “You know, I expected you to make it at least a day before being seen by one of them.”

“Well, you know me.” We headed down the stairs. “I like to exceed expectations.”

She snorted as we rounded the second-floor landing. “So, did you really swing at Zayne?”

“How did you know that? Did Misha tell you?”

“Yes.” She giggled as I groaned. “So, you did. Why?”

“Have you met him?”

“Last night.” She glanced over her shoulder at me, grinning. “He’s...cute.”

“I’m not sure cute is an effective adjective, and I wonder what Ty would think about you finding him cute.”

Jada laughed. “I may be mating to Ty eventually, but that doesn’t mean my eyes don’t work anymore.”

Mating was the archaic and supergross way the Wardens referred to what normal people called marriage. They had a very similar ceremony, except the mating ritual lasted three days, and mating was... Well, it was for forever with the Wardens. They didn’t recognize things such as divorce or separation, and I also found that archaic as all Hell gets out, because they still did the arranged mating thing quite a bit.

Ty and Jada were lucky, though. Honestly, truly in love. I didn’t know what that felt like. To be loved like that or to love like that, in a passionate way that made you want to do ridiculous things like pledge your life to another person.

I would never know what it felt like, either, if I stayed here.

“You should write a book on how to impress and endear yourself to new people you meet,” she said.

“Shut up.” I laughed, pushing her in the back.

She stumbled a step. “Why in the world did you take a swing at him, though?” she asked as she led me through a maze of corridors that were all brightly lit. Thierry left the lights on, no matter if it were day or night. “He seems like a really cool guy.”

“What?” My brows lifted. “He was kind of a jerk to me.”

“Was that after you swung on him?”

“Well, yeah, but...” I snapped my mouth shut, not wanting to think or talk about Zayne. “You know what, whatever. Did you hear what their clan leader thinks about what’s going on in the city?”

“The only thing they talked about while they had dinner was boring stuff, like the weather and which congresspersons they believed were being manipulated by demons,” she said, and I didn’t think the latter sounded boring at all. “But Misha mentioned something about it afterward. That they think something is killing Wardens and demons?”

“What do you think about that?” Surprise flickered through me as we walked past Thierry’s office. I must not be in too much trouble, because if he was really angry, he liked to sit behind his big desk and lecture me.

“I don’t know if there really is something else there, Trin. Seems crazy—watch out. Door.” She caught my arm and pulled me to her side. I’d been so focused on her, I hadn’t seen that it was open. “It has to be a demon, but displaying the bodies of the Wardens and the demons in such a public way? That sounds risky. If the general population finds out about the demons, all of them will be dead. The Alphas will wipe the demons out.”

They’d wipe out all the Wardens, too, and a lot of innocent humans would end up being taken out right along with them.

At least, that’s what we were told.

“Do you really think that would happen? I mean, I get that demons exist because of the whole need for balance between good and evil, but if the demons knew that the Alphas could wipe them out, why would they have had the uprising ten years ago?”

Jada’s glance was sharp, like she couldn’t believe I was questioning the fallacy of this long-held belief. “A lot of the demons involved in the uprising were lower level demons, ones too stupid to realize they were signing their own death warrants. They thought they could somehow take over the world and turn it into their own perfect Hellscape. You know that. We were taught that.”

“We were also taught that there’s always an Upper Level demon pulling the strings of a lower level one,” I reminded her.

She eyed me as she pushed open the kitchen door. I knew that what I was saying was weird, but I had weird thoughts when I was confined to the house.